In enterprise business, the importance of information technology (IT) is ever increasing. Large enterprise organizations rely more and more on robust technology products and related services to support their businesses. Over the past several decades, a large consulting services industry has developed to support and service these large enterprise organizations. Typically, consulting organizations apply one model in executing consulting services. This model involves top-performing, senior level consultants developing customer service partnerships with large enterprise organizations. The senior level consultants leverage a large number of junior consultants to design IT solutions. This model, however, is not easily scalable, it is labor intensive and thus expensive, and does not guarantee quality results. In addition, consulting organizations attempt to leverage previous solutions, developed for other customers, as a means for raising profit margins. This approach leads to non-differentiated solutions which partially address core problems of the enterprises.
Enterprise organizations seek the assistance of consultants to identify, analyze, and solve complex business problems. Complex business problems, as the name suggests, can be extremely complex, and result from various factors. For instance, complex business problems can arise from a series of business changes, rapid growth of businesses, technology changes, and/or technological limitations.
Enterprise organizations, who understand their businesses to a greater extent than consulting firms, desire a collaborative approach in which the enterprise organizations and consulting firms work closely to develop creative business solutions for complex problems. Accordingly, it can be beneficial to leverage business knowledge, held by the enterprise organizations, to immerse a team of consultants into the problems faced by the enterprise organizations in order to develop effective solutions.
One possible immersion mechanism is “serious” games. Serious games can encompass many forms and subject matters and teach players information relating to education, health, science, law and government, computers, and/or a multitude of other subjects. Serious games can be used to immerse a team of consultants or employees into the problems faced by the enterprise organizations to develop effective solutions.
Another challenge with consulting services and immersion mechanisms arises with training new or existing consultants or employees. As businesses grow in size, their ability to communicate, train, and share customer knowledge and experiences with employees become more difficult and more expensive over time. There exists a need to share the experiences of employees and consultants already experienced in developing solutions to complex problems previously faced by the enterprise organization. However, experienced consultants and employees are often more valuable continuing to engage in current problems than in training new consultant or employees.
The current method to train employees through in-person seminars and training courses is slowly decreasing while on-line learning systems are increasing as a preferred training environment. Employees can take online training classes from any location and when it is most convenient for them, which is proving cost-effective. Employees can also review courseware materials, take quizzes, or practice tests online, as many times as they want, until the subject matter is mastered. While online training is replacing in-person training as the preferred training environment, online training can be less flexible than in-person training in that conventional online learning systems apply a rigid linear progression of training. In addition, conventional online learning systems lack contextual data that can inform employees about unique customer perspectives, specific customer environments, and actual customer problems.
Enterprise organizations using serious games to immerse teams of consultants into problems faced by the organization can create large amounts of information regarding problems faced including interviews, narratives, ideas for solving problems, evidence of failed solutions, evidence of successful solutions, etc. In many circumstances, the information generated is the product of experienced consultants or employees. Information used within the serious game can offer rich contextual data providing a deeper level of understanding about the enterprise organization's environment, circumstances, and situations. However, in arriving at solutions to complex problems, large amounts of data can be generated which later in the game becomes clear was irrelevant to a solution.
The above-described deficiencies of training new consultants or employees to address complex problems of customers are merely intended to provide an overview of some of the problems of conventional systems and techniques, and are not intended to be exhaustive. Other problems with conventional systems and techniques, and corresponding benefits of the various non-limiting embodiments described herein may become further apparent upon review of the following description.